How people remember the past and ensure the future remembers them
Humans are the only creatures with a desire to be remembered after death. Throughout all cultures, people, especially those with power, concern themselves with their legacy. We can see evidence of this throughout different eras of history, in the culture, in the stories we tell, and even in the very walls of the buildings around us. These things are meant to preserve an image of who someone was or the world they lived in long after they pass. The way the people of China relay this legacy changes over the centuries. The old tradition was mostly great emperors trying to create their legacy through large structures and great acts, while the new tradition is preserving this legacy in the name of history and tradition.
Many of the structures we saw on this trip emphasized this idea of creating and preserving legacy. The Great Wall, for example, was a legacy builder for multiple dynasties, serving not only its functional and military purposes but also proving itself as a symbol to the people in charge of these dynasties that there will forever be a large part of Chinese culture with their name attached to it.